You're invited to attend our weekly Minnehaha Meetup to network with other neighbors and prepare for the caucus, every Tuesday until the caucus.

I met a stranger...

I met a stranger at the Caribou Coffee on Minnehaha Parkway and Cedar today.

The stranger had seen the book I was reading, The Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose. He came over and asked me how I liked the book. I told him it was great. It even features an ex-girlfriend of mine in chapter 6, who fought the good fight as an "enterprising" reporter for the New York Times, uncovering the identity of a librarian caught in the crosshairs of a National Security Letter that forbade him from even telling his own family about his situation.

Well, after much discussion I lamented how both parties had participated in the loss of civil liberties, before the Patriot Act. For example, another Princeton classmate of mine, who's a law professor, told me about how President Clinton had prepared the way for the loss of Habeas Corpus with the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 he signed into law. The stranger seemed resigned to despair. Nothing to do but accept the inevitable.... What can anyone do? On that note, the stranger left. (Hopefully, what I told him about my support for Ron Paul will sink in.)